One Million Characters

I know you’re not counting works in progress, but it still makes me nervous when I see you 1/12th through the year and 1/20th of the way....

I don’t know quite what to make of 萧红’s style either, I like her stories but find her writing rather difficult to read. Does anyone here know where the style comes from? there's a lot of odd grammar in it. Is it local dialect influence? 

I liked her《生死场》very much, but found it rather hard to read. 

13 hours ago, roddy said:

I know you’re not counting works in progress, but it still makes me nervous when I see you 1/12th through the year and 1/20th of the way....

 

?

@Luxi, interesting. Do you have an example of odd grammar that makes《生死场》difficult to read?

 

《手》is relatively easy to read. The difficult-to-understand “style” is the story’s pacing and narrative arc. In《手》, the main character 王亚明 gets mistreated again and again, with increasing frequency and severity. This abuse seems to be building to something—a tragedy, perhaps, or 王亚明’s vindication. But then another bad thing happens and the story ends. There is no payoff to—or attempt to address—the over-the-top humiliation 王亚明 receives.

@murrayjames, it's a long time since I read it, I don't have any concrete examples, but I remember some very long sentences, a lot of 着 where I had to decide between zhao and zhe, lack of measure words where expected, and generally having to read many paragraphs 2 or more times to understand them. Maybe 'odd grammar' isn't the right term for what probably was mostly syntax difficulties. Here's an example from near the beginning of Chapter 1 of 生死场:

"听说羊丢了，她去扬翻柴堆，她记得有一次羊是钻过柴堆。但，那在冬天，羊为着取暖。她没有想一想，六月天气，只有和她一样傻的羊才要钻柴堆取暖。她翻着，她没有想。全头发洒着一些细草，她丈夫想止住她，问她什么理由，她始终不说。她为着要作出一点奇迹，为着从这奇迹，今后要人看重她，表明她不傻，表明她的智慧是在必要的时节出现，于是象狗在柴堆上耍得疲乏了！手在扒着发间的草秆，她坐下来。她意外的感到自己的聪明不够用，她意外的对自己失望。"

Added: Link to online reading version http://www.99lib.net/book/1837/index.htm

(This seems to be a safe site, free of advertising and with some useful tools including a dictionary link. Registration free via Weibo etc.)

 

@Luxi, wow, I see what you mean. The text you quoted is far more sophisticated and literary than anything in《手》. I look forward to reading it.

I'm not familiar with 蕭紅, but I've read a fair amount of 魯迅, therefore not surprised by the style. It was 1935. 白話文 or written vernacular Chinese was far from mature. There's a lot of experiments going on. Sometimes a writer would even deliberately pursue a 'translationese' style.

9 hours ago, Publius said:

translationese

Of course!!! It pins down a lot of the 'oddities'. Why I never thought of it?

Very helpful, thanks!